


Spring In Archades

by 1000Needles



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:51:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8836402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000Needles/pseuds/1000Needles
Summary: After everything is over, Basch reflects sadly on missed connections.
This story was originally published May 19, 2007, in LiveJournal's ffxii-fic community. Spoilers through the end of the game.





	

It was an unusually warm day for spring in Archades, and the breeze through the open window smelt of sea. The former Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg laid down his pen and stared out past the dancing white curtains. He had tried again and again to concentrate on the papers before him, but his attention was uncharacteristically wandering today. It was not soporific distraction but rather restlessness. That letter. He was ill suited to the life of a judge, he thought.

He did not know how his brother had endured it, the day-to-day monotony; perhaps Gabranth had been less a warrior than Basch had known him. Certainly there was training and sparring and no judge sat idle, but Basch found them dull. He imagined they returned the favor. They knew who he was, of course. It would have been impossible to keep his identity secret from them who had known Gabranth so intimately.

They treated him with deference, there was no question, for he had Lord Larsa's blessing, and times surely had changed in Archades. Still he knew he would never truly be one of their number. He was not exactly lonely—not after he'd known Nalbina—yet sometimes he did think on that loose camaraderie he'd enjoyed those months he'd journeyed with the princess and the children and the sky-pirates. It had been a privilege. He ought not dwell on it. There were worse fates than the life he now led.

At the center of the city the clock-tower chimed the hour, and Basch pushed back his chair and stood. He had put in the better part of a day's-work and accomplished little. He would start again fresh in the morn.

 

* * * * *

 

Basch walked the streets of Archades with a pleasant slowness. One thing he did still savor of his new life was the luxury of time. The dusk air was balmy. Colored lanterns were strung along the shops and cafés, and pretty girls in pretty dresses drank cocktails, laughing. He rolled his shoulders and shook the kinks out of his neck as he walked. He'd changed from the heavy armor uniform, which was probably not strictly correct protocol, but the day was coming to its close. His hair was long again, with the permission of Lord Larsa. He wondered why Gabranth had kept his so unstylishly short; every other man in the Imperial city wore hair to the shoulders. Basch simply preferred to recognize himself in the mirror.

Balthier too had worn his hair short.

At a particularly fragrant storefront Basch stopped to trade chops for a skewer of char-grilled meat. He ate as he walked. He had received a letter from the Lady Ashe— no, Queen Ashelia, he corrected himself. It was nearly two years now since the Bahamut disaster. She'd written many months before to tell him that Balthier and Fran were alive, treasure-hunting in Bervenia, west of the Jagd Yensa and Rozarria. Basch had been— pleased to hear his former comrades had survived.

_They had shared a tent. When the sun went down the Westersand was still hot and they lay stripped to the skin, sweating, sharing back and forth a bottle of wine. Basch thinks Balthier touched him first, but the second and third and fourth touches followed so fast that his reckoning could have been faulty. Balthier tasted of salt._

This morning the Queen's letter said she had received the pair of sky-pirates at the palace. They were headed next to Archades, she said.

Basch finished his meal and threw the skewer away. It was weird to feel that the pirate could be in the city now, around a blind corner, watching the mummer in the square, a mere turn-of-the-head away from eye contact. He had thought Balthier dead for so long. To imagine him now in the flesh was—

_Up against a wall in some back alley of Balfonheim. The stonework scraping his forearms as he held Balthier's wrists over his head. Kissed him. Drunk enough that their teeth met but not so drunk he didn't feel Balthier go hard against him, he hard against Balthier. He went to his knees on the pavement. Balthier tasted of the sky._

Well, he had missed him, these years, as he missed Dalmasca also, for all that it was only his adopted homeland, perhaps more so for that. He had quickly acclimated to its arid climate, enjoying the freedom of its native costume, so different than the wools and furs of his birthplace in Landis. Nor was Archadian fashion nearly so forgiving. Basch remembered looking over at Balthier once as they were trudging up the slope of some endless dune and wondering why the man insisted on the high-necked blouse and heavy tooled-hide trows.

Gods, he had loved the desert, even down to the sand that gritted through the slits in his sandals and got between his toes. He had never complained of Dalmasca's heat since Nalbina, never.

He found his feet turning to the Rienna district. The lights here were sparser, the voices from the bars louder. A pair of men groped each other under an awning, rough, almost wrestling there in the street. Basch looked away. The fashion these days in Archades was same-sex coupling. He often saw ladies a-walking hand-in-hand, parasols over their shoulders, trading coy kisses; and though he appreciated at least that the city folk were not so close-minded as Landisians, who had sneered at such inclinations, he imagined that tomorrow the vogue would be for pet cockatrices or imported madhu. And the men of Archades did not appeal to Basch, not with their arrogance and condescension. Oh, Balthier had been arrogant enough, he supposed, but had always played it as if it were only some elaborate joke.

Now Basch was at the entrance to the Aerodrome and he did protest to himself, really, this is quite absurd; but he went in anyway, past the guard, past the flight desks, through the throngs of ardents and gentry chattering of their vacation plans, to the broad window which looked out over the landing-strip. As if you would even see it, he thought. Nono would have stowed it away already in a docking-port— but no, there it was, parked tidily between two larger ships which towered over its compact agile form: the Strahl.

_Another late night, before the Pharos, the rest of the party asleep in their tents with the eerie ruins of Ridorana looming above, and Basch knew well he and Balthier ought be sleeping also and yet— and yet— he was straddling Balthier in the pilot's-seat, gripping the man's shoulders so fiercely he would leave bruises, and they both bit back their cries in fear of waking the others._

Now what? he thought. But again his feet chose for him, and he found himself back in his suite, the lamp blown out, the city lights splashed across his ceiling in a kaleidoscope of color, and the merry sounds of Archades' never-ending revelry floating up into his room as he curled against himself and stroked rapidly to unsatisfying completion.

 

* * * * *

 

"Judge Gabranth, what say you?"

"In this matter I say nay."

"Judge Zargabaath?"

"Nay."

And so it went on down the list of judges until the cringing accused, an elderly man from Old Archades, was acquitted of the preposterous charges a spiteful ardent had brought to the court; a waste of their time, Basch thought, but he was glad, as he always was, to see that justice did ring true in the Empire, these days. Lord Larsa had done well in what Basch had first deemed a futile effort to purge the legacy of corruption his brother had wrought. His brother, and mine. Basch and Larsa both bore the burden of their predecessors' crimes. Still it seemed to Basch that a new day had dawned in Archadia, and though he did not think he would ever love the land as he had loved Dalmasca, it was a noble cause he served now. Perhaps he was only recalling Dalmasca so fondly through the flattering lens of memory, and perhaps he would have found himself equally bored at its court. Perhaps. Boredom, like memory, like pirates, is fickle.

He ate his noon meal in the great hall with the other judges: roast peppers and squash, flatbread dipped into bowls of pureed spiced beans, cubes of curried vegetables. When they reconvened he found his attention drifting out the window. The breeze was hot and heavy. When they read the roll again he said, "Aye," listlessly, and so it went down the list until some poor bastard had been convicted and hauled off in chains; at least Lord Larsa had abolished the punishment of striking off the thief's hand.

After he went to the stables and, mounted, struck off across the Upland, riding fast and hard until he hit those deserted windmills, their wings sweeping a silent rhythm across the grey sky. His chocobo was shuddering with exhaustion. The sun was setting over the choppy horizon-line, he could hear the fitful crash of wave against cliff, as fog swept in the landscape turned to ash and shadow and— he was not lonely, he told himself, but certainly he might have been some creature from an old legend, left behind after the happy ending. An unworthy thought. Still he would never have imagined so many years ago that he would meet this end, stranded in a city of strangers, serving the empire that had destroyed his homeland.

The chocobo gave a forlorn wark and nudged him with its beak. He stroked the beast's butter-yellow feathers and swung up into the saddle. Enough, enough of this foolishness. It was only the spring air; but still, as he rode home, he could almost see their features rising out of the mist: Raminas, Vossler, Noah. So many friends lost and gone. And he—"Traitor, traitor," breathed the mist—he had, somehow, unaccountably, been left behind.

 

* * * * *

 

Back in Archades he groomed his mount into a presentable form, offering seed and nuts, which the bird seemed to take as an acceptable apology. He bathed in the barracks and went back to his quarters feeling, if not uplifted, than at least sufficiently wearied to sleep solidly. A page met him at the door and bowed.

"You had visitors, my lord."

"Aye?"

"The pirates Balthier and Fran, my lord. They bade me give you their welcome, and were sorry they had missed you."

"My thanks." He gave the lad a gil and let himself into his room. The fog had come in through the open window; he shut it fast and lit a fire in the grate. So he had missed him—them. It was better, surely. There was no purpose to reminiscing over adventures long expired. There was— his throat ached. He stood by the fire, arms folded on the mantle, forehead dropped on top, and breathed. Tomorrow there would be more ceremonies to attend and more judges with whom to parley chit-chat and more hours to fill with the emptiness of Archadian pleasantries and— oh, by the Occuria, surely he was still too young to feel so tired.

 

* * * * *

 

"Yes, you must have just missed them," said Larsa. "They stayed for supper and left after for Balfonheim."

"I am sorry," said Basch. "I have not seen Balthier—Fran—since our journeys together."

"'Tis only a day's-ride away," Larsa said. "I can certainly spare you if you wish the time."

"Nay," Basch said automatically.

"As you would have it," said Larsa. He shuffled through his papers. Basch stood there, looking out the window, standing very straight to bear the weight of the armor he wore; and the gulls swooped down, and up again, weaving a delicate pattern against the mirror of sky and sea.


End file.
